This Thing of Darkness (5 page)

Green could have phoned the information in to the station. It was his day off and, as everyone kept reminding him, he was an inspector, whose job was to oversee and administer, not to scrabble around in the streets unearthing leads, but he was curious to see their new Sergeant Levesque in action to reassure himself that she hadn't booked off early or settled in to conduct the investigation with her feet up on her desk.

The Major Crimes squad room was deserted except for the familiar sight of Bob Gibbs bent over his computer. The young detective's head shot up in alarm at his superior officer's arrival, but he looked relieved when Green asked for the sergeant.

“She's out, sir. Checking s-security tape from the pawn shop on Rideau Street.”

“Has Staff Sergeant Sullivan been in this afternoon?”

Gibbs shook his head, and Green suppressed his frustration as he pondered his next move. He felt restless and dissatisfied. So many dangling unknowns. He should go home to spend the rest of Sunday with his family. He could simply phone Sergeant Levesque to pass on the information on the victim's possible identity. Or he could check out just one more little piece of information to round out the story before he handed it off to her.

His little alcove office smelled stuffy as he squeezed inside and booted up his computer. Stacks of rumpled reports, files and official manuals overflowed the bookcase beside his desk and teetered on the guest chair just inside the door.

In the Canada 411 online directory, there were two listings for S Rosenthal in the Ottawa area, but neither were anywhere near Sandy Hill. Well, well, he thought. Dr. Samuel Rosenthal might have an unlisted phone number. Not so unusual for a psychiatrist, he supposed, since like cops, they would deal with the troubled and potentially unpredictable underbelly of society.

He tried a standard Google search—Samuel Rosenthal, psychiatrist—and received 442 hits. He added Ottawa to narrow the search down to 164 hits. A quick scan of these revealed that Dr. Rosenthal had been a prolific author of academic papers on depression, schizophrenia, the role of stress, and the efficacy of various unpronounceable drugs. He had given public lectures, sat on the boards of mental health and community agencies, and taught at the university medical school. Almost all the references were more than ten years old, but the most recent ones dealt with drug efficacy in the treatment of adjustment disorders in adolescence.

What the hell is an adolescent adjustment disorder, Green wondered in astonishment. Is it a label for kids like me, who'd run a little wild in rebellion against the obsessive overprotection of panicky parents? Out of curiosity, he clicked on the reference but couldn't access the article without subscribing to the journal. The brief abstract that preceded the article, however, was illuminating.

Adjustment disorders are by definition short-lived reactions to stress, characterized by mood and anxiety symptoms or acting-out behaviour. Despite the well-documented stress of adolescence, the diagnosis of adjustment disorder in this population is generally overlooked by mental health practitioners in favor of old standbys like anxiety disorder, mood disorder and even the major psychoses, thus squandering the opportunity to provide genuine help. In this rush to pathologize them, the adolescent's own analysis of his or her experience is viewed of no account.

And I thought police lingo was indecipherable, Green thought, but there was no denying the challenging tone. He scanned the bio that followed. Samuel Rosenthal had been born in Capetown, South Africa and had been educated at Capetown University and Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital in London before emigrating to Canada in 1964 to accept a post in Montreal. He had moved across the country, working his way up the academic ladder, before ending his career as professor and a chief psychiatrist at the Rideau Psychiatric Hospital, where Sharon worked.

Green wondered if Sharon had known him before his retirement, and if she knew anything about his reputation as a man and as a psychiatrist. He was tempted to call her, but her reaction to his mid-afternoon detour into work had not been encouraging. He could tell she was hiding her annoyance for Tony's sake, but neither of them needed what remained of their weekend further invaded by his work. Besides, Rosenthal's work as a psychiatrist was probably utterly irrelevant to his death at the hands of street punks.

Green smiled wryly at the irony. Street punks—homeless, drug-addicted and alienated from the world—were the ultimate example of adolescent adjustment disorder.

As interesting as the information was, however, none of it yielded any clues as to Rosenthal's current address or telephone number. Green reached for his phone. It took him a few minutes to round up his back-door contact at Bell Canada and secure a listing for the doctor. Rabbi Tolner was right. Sam Rosenthal lived on Nelson Street, only a block from Rideau Street. And also, in a coincidence too close for comfort, only a block west of Sid Green's seniors' home.

I'm coming home, I'm coming home, he promised Sharon silently as he drove to the old doctor's home. He knew the building, a grand old Victorian mansion that would once have housed a member of Parliament or senior civil servant in burgeoning post-Confederation Ottawa. In its heyday, it would have seen its share of soirées and political intrigue, but it was now divided into six flats, each with its own doorbell and mailbox in the front hall. The apartments were probably occupied by a mix of university students, fixed-income seniors and new immigrants. From the medley of smells in the hallway, some East Indians and Latin Americans were among them.

The front yard betrayed the same descent from elegance to pragmatism. Most of it was paved over to house a jumble of bicycles, garbage and recycling bins, but under the bay window was a well-mulched rose garden still producing vibrant pink and red blooms at the end of the season. Someone must be weeding it, fertilizing it and encouraging it to grow in this toxic waste of asphalt and dust. Probably Dr. Rosenthal himself, accustomed to the stunning perennial gardens that surround the houses overlooking the Rideau River.

According to Tolner, Dr. Rosenthal occupied the ground floor flat, but there was no name on his buzzer or mailbox. Anonymous to the end, Green thought, and wondered whether it was professional paranoia that had lingered into retirement, or simply a sense that this place would never be home. Ringing the buzzer brought no response. His fingers itched to ring one of the neighbours. This was not his investigation, he castigated himself, and the follow-up really belonged to Sergeant Levesque.

He was rescued from his dilemma when one of the interior doors opened, and a young woman came out into the hall. Small, blonde and impossibly skinny, she was dressed in jeans and a frilly purple jacket, with the trademark book bag slung over one shoulder and a bike helmet under her arm. Her weary eyes widened with alarm at the sight of him. He hastened to introduce himself, which reassured her only marginally. She edged towards the door as he recorded her name—Lindsay Corsin—and asked her about the occupant on the ground floor.

“The landlord? He's quiet and nice, but he keeps to himself.” Lindsay had a breathy, singsong voice that phrased everything as a question. “I've talked to him like maybe three times? Since I moved here. Why?”

“Can you describe him? Height, weight, hair colour?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. Medium, you know? About the same as you, only way older.”

Green suppressed a smile. In the past, his fine brown hair, freckled nose and medium build had made him look deceptively youthful, but recently strands of grey had appeared at his temples. It was reassuring to know that seventy-five still looked a long way off.

“What can you tell me about his clothes?”

“He's a funny dresser. Always has a suit, even a tie. He's old-fashioned that way.”

Mentally Green was ticking off the points of confirmation. “Have you seen him today?”

“No, but I've been upstairs. I don't think he's in.”

“Does he have visitors? Go out much?”

She wrinkled her brow as if puzzled by the question. Her gaze darted to his closed door, and she seemed to vacillate. “Sometimes he has visitors. I hear them talking, like? You can hear everything through these walls.”

“Talking about what?”

“I couldn't hear. Just, like, conversation? But mostly he's alone.” She shifted uneasily. Took the helmet in both hands and twirled it. “Umm, I gotta go. I'm late for my study group.”

“I won't keep you much longer. One last question. Does he go out at night?”

She frowned as though trying to figure out why he was asking. “Sometimes, I guess. I think he has trouble sleeping, because he gets on my case when I have friends over. Keeps pounding the ceiling with his cane.” Her face cleared with sudden understanding. “Oh, this is about last week, eh?”

“What happened last week?”

“Well, someone trashed his place. Broke a window in the back? Boy, was he mad. But you guys know all that. He wanted you to fingerprint his whole place.”

Having now run roughshod over Levesque's first homicide investigation long enough, Green realized the sergeant needed to be brought into the picture. The obvious next move—checking out the apartment and the Break and Enter investigation—was hers to make. So he thanked Lindsay and handed her his card with the usual request to contact him if she remembered anything important. She snatched it and scurried out the door without a backward glance. She and her bicycle were already out of sight by the time he got back into his car.

He found Levesque crammed into the small utility closet that passed for the security and housekeeping office at the back of the Rideau Street pawn shop. She looked up with excitement, and if she was unnerved or annoyed by his appearance, she betrayed no sign. All business, she gestured towards the grainy monitor in front of her.

“Lucky for us, the shop has the tape on a two-day loop over the weekend so the shop owner can check for intrusions or missing merchandise when he arrives Monday morning. So we have coverage for the critical time period between ten p.m. Saturday and five a.m. Sunday.”

Green peered at the monitor. The date and time, down to the second, were stamped in the bottom right corner of the image. The camera seemed to be mounted in the upper corner of the main door frame, and its wide-angled lens showed a blurry, fisheye view of the barred entranceway to the store along with the edge of the shop window and the sidewalk beyond. As it rolled, Green squinted, trying to make out details. “Any sign of the victim?”

She shook her head. “He must have been on the other side of the street at this point.”

That makes sense, Green thought, since his home was on the other side of the street. However, in his experience, elderly people with canes were careful to cross at a traffic light. “I wonder what made him cross in the middle of the block,” he mused. “Any sign of trouble?”

“Just the usual Saturday night. Half a dozen drug deals, a girl having a shoving match with her boyfriend, I don't know how many drunks pissing in the gutter, sex trade workers strolling by...” Levesque tapped the screen as a figure limped by, trundling a pull cart behind him. “There's Screech, on his way to his sleeping quarters. Time is 1:33 a.m. He still has his sleeping bag.”

“Have we talked to him? He may be able to
ID
some of these people.”

“We took his statement, but his memory is unreliable.”

An understatement, Green thought. Screech was a proud Cree from Labrador who'd once worked the mines in Northern Quebec until his lungs gave out, but ten years on the street had not improved his health. Nor his mind. But even so, sometimes Screech knew things about the street that no one else did. The trick was in persuading him to share them. Money usually improved his mood, a fact Green mentioned to Levesque.

She reached over and rifled a stack of papers at her side. “I've printed off stills, and once the pathologist gives us a better idea on time of death, I'll show them to him. I've also put a call out on the street. But we did find one promising lead.” She leaned over and began to fast-forward the tape. Green watched the jerky flashes of people scurrying past the shop.